Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

THE SONG OF SIGHS

by ANGELA SLATTER

I

FEBRUARY 12TH

The song of Sighs, which is his.

Let him kiss me with his mouths:

for his love is better than ichor.

THE TRANSLATION IS coming along, but ponderously.

It takes so long to get the languages to agree, the tongues to collude. But it is close. Some days, though, I wonder why I don’t adopt an easier hobby, like knitting or understanding string theory. I tap on the thick folio with nails marred by chipped polish. I remind myself this is for fun and stare at the creamy slab of bound pages, let my eyes lose focus so all the notations of my pen look like so many chicken scratches. So they all cease to make sense. If I stare long enough, perhaps I might see through time, see the one who wrote this and ask, perhaps, for its greater meaning.

A polite cough interrupts my reverie. I look up and find twenty pairs of eyes fixed upon me. I realise that I heard the buzzer a full minute ago, that my class has quietly packed up their texts and pads, pens and pencils.

“Doctor Croftmarsh?” says one of them, a handsome manly boy, tall for his age, dreamy blue eyes. I cannot remember his name. “Doctor, may we go? Only, Master Thackeray gets annoyed when we’re late.”

I nod, pick his name from the air. “Yes, Stephen, sorry. Offer my apologies to the Master and tell him I will make amends. Read chapter seven of the Roux, we will discuss what he says about Gilgamesh tomorrow.”

Thackeray will expect expensive whisky in recompense; he does not miss an opportunity to drink on another’s tab. His forgiveness is dearly bought, but it is easier to keep him sweet than make an enemy of him. There is the scrape and squawk of chair legs dragged across wooden floorboards, and desk lids clatter as students check they’ve not forgotten anything.

As they file out, I offer an afterthought, “Those of you wishing to do some extra study for next week’s exams, don’t forget your translations. The usual time.”

“Yes, Doctor Croftmarsh,” comes the chorus. There will be at least six of them, the brightest, the most ambitious, those desiring ever so ardently to get ahead. This is what the academy specialises in, propelling orphans upward. Idly, I make a bet with myself: Tilly Sanderson will be the first to knock at 6:30.

The door closes softly behind the last of the students and the space is silent, properly silent for the first time today, no whoosh of breath in and out, no nasal snorts or adenoidal whistles, no sneezes, no sighs, no surreptitious farts, no whispered conversations they think I cannot hear simply because they don’t want me to. Dust specks cartwheel in the shafts of light coming through the windows. I close my eyes, enjoying the sensation of not being scrutinised for however brief a time. A band of tension is tightening across my forehead. Beneath my fingers, the substantial cushion of journal pages is strangely warm.

II

FEBRUARY 13TH

Because of thy savour

thy name is as fear poured forth,

And thus do virgins fear thee.

The refectory is awash with polite noise, the clatter of cutlery against crockery, the ting of glasses and water jugs meeting. Students and teachers, all at their allotted tables, talk quietly to one another, all in their own class groups.

The academy is a large place, a great building in the Gothic style, four long wings joined to make a square, with a broad green quadrangle in the middle. Two sides of the structure face the sea, looking out over the epic cliff drop; the other two are embraced by the woods and the well-tended grounds. The nearest town is ten miles distant. There is a teaching staff of twenty, three cooks, four cleaners, two gardeners and a cadre of two hundred-odd students.

As a child, I was occasionally sent to stay with an acquaintance of my parents, here in this very house, before its owners’ dipping fortunes made a change of hands essential, and it became a school for exceptional orphans. I recollect very little about those visits, having but dim impressions of many rooms, large and dust-filled, corridors long and portrait-lined, and bed chambers stuffed with canopied beds, elaborate dressers and wardrobes that loomed towards one in the night like trolls creeping from beneath bridges. I remember waking from nightmares of the place, begging my mother and father not to be sent there again.

It was only after they were gone, when I was grown and qualified, seeking employment and a quiet retreat after the accident, that I saw an advertisement for a history teacher. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. I have been here for a year.

This is what I’m told I remember.

I’m assured it’s one of those things, this kind of amnesia that takes away some recollections and leaves others—I retain everything I must know in order to teach. I keep every bit of study I ever undertook tucked under my intellectual belt. I memorised the things that have happened since I came here. I may even recall the car accident—or at least, I have a sense of an explosion, of flying through the air, of terrible, intense pain—but I’m never quite sure what I can actually invoke of that time.

I suppose I am fortunate to be alive when my parents are not. I’ve been promised that many people I once knew are dead, but I’m uncertain whether I actually feel a loss. There are no remnants of that old life, no photos of my parents and me. No holiday snaps, no foolish playing-around in the backyard photos. I have no box of mementoes, no inherited jewellery, no ancient teddy bear with its fur loved off. Nothing that might provide proof of my growing up, of my youth, of my being.

I fear I have no true memory of who I am.

In the same notebook where I make my translations, in the very back pages are the scribbles I write to remind myself of who I am supposed to be. I read them over and again: I am Vivienne Croftmarsh. I have a Ph.D. I teach at the academy. I am an only child and now an orphan. I translate ancient poetry as a pastime.

This is who I am.

This is what I tell myself.

But I cannot shake the feeling that something is working loose, that the world around me is softening, developing cracks, threatening to crumble. I can’t say why. I cannot deny a sense of formless dread. My hands are beginning to ache; I rub at the slight webbing between the fingers, massaging the tenderness there.

“Wake up, dreamy-drawers.” Fenella Burrows is the closest thing I have to a friend here; she plants herself and her lunch tray across from me at the deserted end of the table I’ve chosen. Most of the faculty take the hint and stay away, but not her, and I don’t mind. She tells me we went to school together, but isn’t offended when I am unable to reminisce. She jerks her head towards the journal and my ink-stained fingers. “How’s it going?”

“Getting there. Second verse.”

“Second verse, same as the first,” she snorts. Fenella throws back her head when she laughs, all the mouse-brown curls tumbling down her back like a waterfall. She leans in close and says, “Don’t look now, but Thackeray is watching you.”

I pull a face, don’t turn my head. “Thackeray’s always watching.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you don’t think he’s attractive.”

Yes, he is attractive, but he stares too much, seems to see too much, seems to dig beneath my skin with his gaze and pull out secrets I didn’t know were there. That’s the sense I get anyway, but I don’t tell Fenella because it sounds stupid and she clearly finds him appealing. Her smile is limned with the pale green of jealousy. “He’s all yours,” I say.

She sighs. “If only. No one wants the plain bridesmaid.”

“How were your classes this morning?” I ask.

“Tilly Sanderson out-Frenched me.”

“That sounds appalling and punishable by a jail term.”

“Grammar-wise, you fool.” She adds more salt to the unidentifiable vegetarian mush on her plate. I can’t really bear to look at it. Fenella insists it’s an essential tool in her diet plan. I see no evidence: her face is still as round as a pudding and so is she.

“Well, she’s very smart.”

“Yes, but I hate it when the little beasts are smarter than us.” She shovels the mess from her plate to her mouth and seems to chew for a long time.

“Honestly, don’t you think eating is meant to be, if not fun, then at least easy? How much mastication does that require?”

“It’s good for you; it’s just a bit… fibrous.”

“It looks like the wrong end of the digestion process.”

“You’re an unpleasant creature. Don’t know why I talk to you.” She steals a chip off my plate.

I stare up at the head table, frown. “Have you seen the Principal lately?”

“A day or so ago,” she says. “Why?”

“Just feel like they haven’t been around for ages.”

“That’d be your dodgy memory. Old trout will be here somewhere,” she says dismissively. “You can always talk to Candide, if it’s urgent.”

“No, nothing really. Just curious. Also, I don’t want to get trapped by the Deputy Head—last time I ended up listening to him recounting his thesis from 1972 on the evils of the Paris student uprisings of ’68.” Candide’s about sixty, but he seems older and dustier than he should. Fenella hooks her thumbs under the front facing of her academic gown, tucks her chin into her neck and looks down her nose at me, adopting a sonorous intonation.

“‘Bloody peasants, disrespecting their betters. It’s all one can expect from a nation that murdered its own royalty and has far too many varieties of cheese.’”

“Don’t make the mistake of mentioning Charles I and the thud his head made on the scaffolding. I learned that the hard way.”

We laugh until we’re gasping, and the older teachers are looking at us disapprovingly. We’ll be spoken to later about the dangers of hilarity in front of the students and letting our dignity visibly slip. Causes the natives to become restless if they think we’re human and we lose our grip on the moral high ground.

III

FEBRUARY 14TH

Lead me, I will wait for thee:

the King once summoned me into his chambers:

and I was glad and rejoiced,

I remember thy love more than life:

All tremble before thee.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who, when faced with a window two floors up, will immediately accept the limitations it places upon them; and those who instantly look for a way to subvert both the height and the threatened effects of gravity. This room is full of the latter. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching: the opportunity to find those who would chance a fall in the attempt to fly, rather than stay safely within bounds.

The buzz of conversation in my oak-panelled rooms washes over me. Stephen and Tilly are arguing about whether Ishtar is more or less powerful as a profligate prostitute goddess, or is simply a male wish-fulfilment fantasy; the other five watch the back and forth of a teen intellectual tennis match. The tipple of port has made them aggressive and I imagine sex will be the result at some point. Time to nip that in the bud. I give a slow blink, to moisten my dry eyeballs, and clap my hands.

“Enough, enough. You’re not talking history any more, you’ve slid into pop culture, which is Doctor Burrows’ area, not mine,” I say. “Look at the time. Off you all go.”

“Goodnight, Doctor Croftmarsh,” they say. The closing of the door and then the one student left, the one who always waits behind; the one who stands out, and frequently apart from, her fellows. Tilly, who thinks herself special, and is, I suppose. So much talent, so clever; she will do well when she goes out into the world.

“How are you?” she asks and I am a bit taken aback. She steps close, takes my hands in hers, begins stroking the palms, an intimate, invasive gesture. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. “Do you feel it yet? Has it begun?”

“Do I feel what, Tilly?”

Her face changes, the avid expression painted over by one of uncertainty, perhaps fear. What does the child mean?

“Tilly.” Thackeray’s voice is low but seems to affect the girl like the crack of a whip. She starts and looks guilty. I didn’t even hear the door open. “Tilly, don’t bother Doctor Croftmarsh. It’s late and time for you to be getting back to your room.”

Tilly drops my hands, and dips her head, blonde curls covering her blush-red face. She makes for the exit, then looks back over her shoulder before she leaves, smiling a sunburst at me and then throwing an odd glance at Thackeray, which I cannot interpret.

“Sleep well. Don’t forget to read the Roux,” I say after her as the door closes and Thackeray leans his back against it.

He grins, his thick lips smug, then he moves into the room without invitation and helps himself to the whisky waiting on the shelf, knocking one of the heavy crystal glasses against the other. He raises the bottle at me, and I nod. Beneath his black woollen academic robe he is still a rugby player, but slowly going soft and bloating in parts. His pale cheeks are shadowed with ebony stubble; the ruffian’s posture hides an acute, albeit lazy intelligence; sometimes I wonder how he came to teach at a place as exclusive as this.

“So, young Tilly Sanderson,” he begins, handing me one of the tumblers. His own measure is far more generous. He slumps into the chair I recently vacated, drapes himself across it, long legs stretched forward, one arm hanging down almost to the carpet, the other hand clutching his drink. His voice is low, trying for levity, but there’s a dark edge that tells me to tread carefully. “Not teaching her something new, are you?’

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I sip at the whisky, feel it burn down my throat then take up residence in my belly, heating me surely as a fire. From a chest at the foot of my writing desk, I pull an unopened bottle and hold it out to him.

“What? Can’t want me gone so soon, surely.” But he gets to his feet and reaches out. He wraps his large hand around not just the neck, but my hand as well, trapping me unless I want to sacrifice forty-year-old Scotch. His breath is hot and malt-rich on my face; I can feel the warmth radiating off his body, and my cheeks flame with a dim memory of drunken fumbling. I’m not sure how far it went. “Surely we could indulge ourselves once again… Who’s to know?”

I would know. And so would he. And it would give him something else to use against me in a school where fraternisation of any kind is reason for dismissal. I know how the world works; he would receive a slap on the wrist and I would be gone without references. “Good night, Thackeray.”

I pull away and he has to juggle to save his prize. He gives a slow smile, takes his defeat well, throws back the amber in his glass and returns the empty to the shelf.

He leaves and I feel as if I can breathe for the first time in an age. From the corridor, I hear the whisper and scuffle of boots. My heart clenches at the idea that any of the other teachers might have seen him coming out of my room. I creep over and crack the door, putting my eye to the sliver.

Thackeray and Tilly stand close, oh so close. His free hand is roaming up one thigh, over her hip, then cupping her backside roughly. Her face is hidden from me, pressed into his chest.

I step back. The headache that’s been with me all day worsens; I feel as if the bones of my skull are pushing against each other. I rub my palms across my face, hoping to hold the pieces in place, to press the pain back.

IV

FEBRUARY 15TH

I am hidden, but lovely, O ye daughters of darkness,

as the dreams of Great Old Ones,

as the drowned houses of R’lyeth.

The office door, with its frosted glass panel reading simply PRINCIPAL, is unlocked, and there is no sign of the watchdog, Mrs. Kilkivan. The Tilly–Thackeray situation gave me a restless night and I thought I might approach the Head before class.

Inside, the floor is covered with an enormous rug that stretches almost to the boundaries of the enormous office. The walls are covered by bookshelves, neatly stacked with hardbacks, decorative spines showing off silver lettering. Three display cases take up one corner, each with a series of ancient gold jewellery, marked with carefully hand-written labels and histories: this one found in ancient Babylon, this one from a well in Kish, yet another dug up from the depths of Nineveh, this from Ashur, these from Ur and Ebla. Artefacts excavated from the cradle of civilisation; I seem to recall the Head had been active in archaeological digs in early life, and that father and mother, uncles and aunts, had all spent time in the Middle East.

Beneath the broad tall window is a desk roughly the width of the office, with just enough space to walk around, if you’ve slim hips. The desk is neat and tidy, a notepad on the blotter which is perfectly aligned with the edge of the mahogany edifice, the bases of the two banker’s lamps also carefully placed, one on the left corner, the other one the right. The pens, fine things, are in individual cases on the polished surface; a sturdy pewter letter opener lies next to them, protected in a bronze enamelled sheath.

Some of the shelves are bereft of books, but stand instead as habitations for busts of Greek and Roman philosophers, statuettes of gods and demons, strange twisted things that would not be out of place in a museum.

Unable to resist the impulse, I step around the desk, plant myself in the ample leather seat and try one of the drawers. Locked. All of them. I rub at my forearms; the skin is dry, thickening, irritated. The grandfather clock strikes the hour and I will be late for class. I snatch a piece of paper from the notebook and scribble a message to the Principal that I need a word. I place it in the centre of the blotter, where it cannot be missed. I carefully put the pen back in its case, only after trying to wipe off any finger marks.

Here is my problem: Tilly seemed willing. She is almost eighteen—yes, we keep them here longer, if they wish. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Some stay on and become staff, studying, learning from the teachers here, which gives them a far better training than they would find elsewhere. Here is my other problem: the possibility of Thackeray revealing what may have happened between us, but which I am unsure even took place. And Tilly, she is a child, easily influenced.

Who do I protect? Myself or the child?

I don’t know what I will tell the Head. Candide will be useless; he will simply give me a slow blink and ask whatever do you mean? The Principal is the key. When we meet I will know what to say.

V

FEBRUARY 16TH

Look not upon me, because I am disguised,

because the sun hath burned me:

Earth’s children were angry with me;

they stole what was mine;

They kept him from me.

The west wing houses the library; it’s stacked with shelving and desks overrun by computer terminals and printers. A wooden set of card-index drawers stands lonely and lost in the middle of the room—the young librarian doesn’t know quite what to do with it and is too afraid of the ghosts of librarians past to throw it out. Curiosities abound: a giraffe’s skeleton, a giant cephalopod, spears and shields and helmets of disappeared empires, bronze horse statuettes, elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns, all take up space on walls, shelves, nooks and alcoves. There are portraits, too: long-dead educators staring down with what might be disapproval or hauteur or both.

The only wall unencumbered by shelves or display items is covered by a tapestry. A woman sits enthroned on a stone seat, a staff in one hand, a snake in the other. Her eyes are wide, almost too much so: icthyoid and protuberant; her lips pouting, her nose somewhat flat; hair a mess of black; yet there is a kind of beauty to her, a compelling strangeness that draws the observer in. She wears a simple green robe, something that seems almost armoured, perhaps scaled, and at her slippered feet, a field of blossoms: black, silver, red, yellow and richest chestnut petals on stalks of green. She sits most closely to the left of the tapestry—or rather, to the right—and to the right, or rather her left, nothing more than a verdant tangle of forest. Branches and trunks, undergrowth and vines, all twist together to form a dense curtain, seemingly without uniformity or plan, utterly wild and overgrown, curled around the stony ruins of a building crushed by the foliage.

In a quiet corner of the room sits Fenella, surrounded and almost concealed by a fortress of books built on the desk in front of her. At one of the tables are Tilly and Stephen and their various acolytes; I note the blonde curly head turn towards me, offering a smile, but I pretend not to see her, keep myself aimed directly at my friend.

“Have you seen the Head?” I ask, sotto voce, as I scratch at the sides of my throat, trying to get rid of the terrible itching there. She jumps, pulled from her concentration by my question, both hands thumping on the tabletop in fright.

“Don’t you knock?” One of the book towers wobbles and begins a slow slide. She tries to stop it, then gives up and lets the tomes fan out, domino-like, until the final one teeters on the edge and falls. It marks the end of its descent with a noise like a shot that stops the library for a few moments.

Fenella folds her arms and looks at me.

I ask again, “Have you seen the Head?”

“This morning,” she says. “What is wrong with you?”

And she’s right, I’m jumpy, sweating, twitching at the slightest noise, the tiniest hints of something moving in the corner of my eye. There’s still the headache: as if someone is trying to crack my skull open. And I cannot shake the accompanying sense that success will result in a dark river, a black tide flowing out of me. I blink, hard, eyes dry.

“I don’t feel well,” I say. “And…”

She puts a hand on my forehead—the cool flesh is a shock against my hot skin. “Go and lie down. You don’t have any classes this afternoon.”

“Thackeray,” I say, the words becoming harder to force out, the hurt pressing in on my head. “Thackeray and Tilly, were…”

She tilts; the whole room tilts and I can’t figure out why. I wonder that the books aren’t falling from the shelves; then I realise I’m the one who’s on an angle. I’m the one who’s falling. I hit the floor, head bouncing against the polished parquetry.

There’s a burble of noise around me; I see figures looming above, blurring. Beneath my head, I feel a beat. A thudding, ever so gentle, a mere echo of a vibration, a rhythm, a pulse, a song, but it will grow stronger, of that I have no doubt. It travels up me like a tremor, a whisper of motion. It moves me and shakes me and lulls me all at once. I close my eyes, for I have no choice, and everything is blocked out.

The last thing I hear is Fenella swearing at the crowd to stand back and let me have some air. I try to smile, but cannot feel my face.

VI

FEBRUARY 17TH

Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou waitest,

where thou sleepest:

for I shall not be as one turned aside

by the rise and fall of aeons.

Sound, unclear, as if heard through water. I swim up, slowly, ignoring the yearning pain in my bones. Voices. It’s voices: male and female.

All I can feel beneath me now are the soft crisp linens of my bed; no more subtle rhythm, no more gentle beat. Clear-headed at last, but I keep my eyes closed, for they still retain an echo of the ache. And I listen.

“How is she?” Thackeray, subdued.

“The same as she always is at this point.” Fenella, cool. They’ve been arguing.

“No. It seems different—she’s never struggled like this.”

Fenella is silent.

“What if she’s—?”

“You’re an idiot.” Fenella, angry. “She saw you. You can’t just fuck about for the better part of a year. You put us all in danger. We’re not completely invisible here.”

“We’ve been over this already. What does it matter? She’ll be gone soon.”

“We go to all the trouble of choosing, of making each one think they’re special.”

“So? I just made her feel a little bit extra special.”

“Everyone else here is careful. Goes out of their way to keep us all secret and safe.” Her voice drops. “I will tell her, when this one is gone and she’s back.”

“You worry too much, Burrows. Her time is short,” he sneers.

“She won’t need long.”

That shuts him up, then there is a shuffling, his heavy steps moving away, the door opening and closing. I crack an eyelid and see Fenella, hands over her face, shoulders slumped. I know my vision is still wrong because she seems to have only three fingers. She sighs, throws back her shoulders, takes a deep breath. I focus.

She leans over me without really looking at me, touches my face. Five digits, of course; stupidity. I do not react, keep my breathing steady, slow. She steps away and leaves the room.

I wait, counting down seconds, counting down until I feel safe. I sit up, throw back the covers, swing my legs out of bed. Through the window I can see the sky, blue-black, dotted with stars, buttoned-down with a full moon. 11:30 says the bedside clock. I have slept long.

My legs tremble, I straighten. My hands spasm, the base of my skull feels… stretched. I shake my head, leave the room, uncaring that my pink flannel pyjamas are not the best attire for sneaking through corridors.

The dust and darkness are heavy in the Principal’s office. The moonlight streams in and on the broad expanse of the desk I can see a piece of paper. My note. Untouched, unmoved, unread.

Once again, I pull at the drawers, knowing they’ll still be locked. I take the letter opener from its place and jam it into the keyhole, then into the thin space between the bottom of one drawer and the top of another, jiggle it, jemmy it and to my surprise the lower one grinds open with a protest. The fine dark wood splinters, exposing its pale naked inside. The drawer slides on reluctant runners.

There is a sewing-box, a padded embroidered thing, quite large, a silver toggle slid through the loop on the front to keep it closed. I unclasp it and flip it open. Inside, threads. So many threads, all twisted into figures of eight, their middles cinched in by the end of the very same thread. Tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds? So many: black, silver, red, yellow, richest chestnut. On the padded silk inside the lid, an array of needles, sentinels pinned through the fabric, all fine and golden, some thicker than others, fit for all manner of work, for varying thicknesses of material, canvas, skin, hide, what-have-you. I reach in, prick my index finger, watch the blood well and drip onto the pale blue silk, clotting bundles of thread.

I suck on the injured digit and notice, behind the casket, a creamy wad of pages. I draw them forth. Each one has a ragged edge as if torn from a journal. Each one is filled with scribbles, ancient cuneiforms of text, amateurish translations beside those obtuse scratchings:

I am hidden, but lovely, O ye daughters of darkness. They kept him from me. I remember thy love more than life. Let him kiss me with his mouths. Thy name is as fear poured forth. Lead me, I will wait for thee.

Each page dated; I can see a series of different years. How many? Oh, God, how many?

The grandfather clock interrupts me as I kneel there on the floor. It chimes the quarter-hour and I watch the hands move. The office door opens and Tilly’s soft voice, rich with anticipation, a little fear, calls “Doctor Croftmarsh? It’s time.”

“Tilly. Tilly, you have to get away from here.” I scramble up off my knees, try to move towards her at the same time, stumble twice before I stand and manage to get a hand on her arm. The touch is as much to steady me as to underline my point to her. “There’s something going on. We have to go—we’ll go out through the kitchens, no one will see us—”

“Doctor Croftmarsh, don’t be ridiculous,” she says, barely concealing disdain. I tighten my fingers around her wrist. She jerks her arm away.

“No, Tilly, I’m not being silly. Something is happening and you’re in danger.”

“No,” she says, smiling, but I can’t quite fathom the demeanour. “I’m not in danger—He has called my name and I will heed him. He will know me and choose me for I am new.”

And all at once I know that inimitable combination of tone and expression: triumph and malice, jealousy and hope. The child thinks she is part of a greater mystery. She thinks Thackeray will—will what? Despair and desperation well up inside me as rhythmic pulses of pain.

We stare at each other, time seemingly marching in place until, at last, there is the sound of the final flick of the clock hands shifting into place. Mechanisms begin to sing midnight and all of my agonies fall away. I smile at the girl and offer my hand in conciliation.

VII

FEBRUARY 18TH

If thou know not, O thou greatest among beasts,

Send me dreams so I might guess,

and kill the flock by the shepherds’ tents.

With my free hand I hook the edge of the tapestry and pull. The right half of it hangs from a rail separate to that for the left, so, when drawn across, the picture changes, the forest folded back upon itself becomes a creature, muscular, tentacled, winged; the broken stones become a second throne and the lord’s limbs, now seen true, caress his bride in lewd love.

More importantly, this redecoration shows a door in the wall behind the arras, a door which leads down to the academy’s rarely used chapel; to the undercroft more precisely. I wrench it open and a whiff of dust puffs out. Dust and something else, like long-dead fish.

“Come, Tilly,” I say. There is no answer. I turn to look at her; she is staring at the hanging. I take her face in my hands, run my fingers through her hair, tender as a mother. I kiss her on the forehead, a chaste embrace, and say, “You were right: you have been called, Tilly, and you are needed. You are anointed, the coming one. And He will know your name and I shall see you covered in the throes of glory before this night is out.”

In the darkness, I can see with the unerring stare of a creature from the deep. In her gaze is my reflection, my features rewritten by my memories, my true memories: eyes set wide and angled up, icthyoid and protuberant, pouting lips, flattened nose. And the hair, a waving tangle of green-black tentacles, a-shiver with a life of their own. I stretch, my bones cracking. I am taller.

The girl’s expression is stunned. “Doctor Croftmarsh?”

I nod and smile, my teeth sharp and liberally spaced. The girl shudders. Some panic at this moment, the imminence of death shaking them from the enchantment of being chosen; some go quietly. Tilly, I suspect, is beginning to realise that she did not take note of the fine print in the deal that was struck. I lock a webbed hand around her wrist and pull her towards her destiny.

My head is full of things long-forgotten, long set aside so that I—we—might hide and survive. Today, this anniversary of the Fall of Innsmouth, of my Lord’s terrible injuries and afflictions, of his ever-dying, this day the memories are whole. They do not afflict me. They are mine and they rest easy in the pan of my skull.

“Never fear, Tilly.” The language feels strange in my mouth, the words seemingly square, not sibilant, not long and serpentine, but blocky. I persist, dragging the girl behind me, down into the darkness of the cold stone staircase and the crushing blackness of the undercroft and the tomb. The space is just large enough to fit the rest of the staff, teaching and domestic, all changed, all re-made like me; all clustered in a tenebrous group at the far end of the crypt. “Know that you are a part of something great.”

Here she will breathe her last, her soul, her blood given so that my Lord may heal. A process oh-so-slow, but only on this one day is the barrier between his death and my life thin enough for this service.

In my haste I am clumsy.

In her terror she is strong.

When she kicks at me, I loosen my grip and she pulls away, races in the shadows, back towards the stairs, towards freedom. All the trouble gone to, to cut her from the herd, to groom her, to make her feel special—and she runs. There is the sound of a slap, a grunt.

“Careless,” says Thackeray. “You are not what you were.” He holds the girl still, carries her as a child does a reluctant cat, her back against his chest, her limbs splayed, belly exposed. She no longer struggles. Thackeray offers her to me. I stare into her moon-wide eyes and whisper, “All will be well.”

The talons of my right hand open up her chest, the nightgown then the skin. A silver mist bursts from the hole, followed by a gush of blood, and both are drawn down to the stone of the tomb, then immediately begin to seep through the porous surface.

I hear, as her life pours out, the great booming rhythm of my Lord’s heart, strengthened across aeons, across life and death and the space in between. Such a slow healing.

From the gloom steps Fenella, a broad smile on her plain face. “We must talk, before you grow forgetful again,” she says.

I don’t answer, merely look at the shell of Tilly Sanderson sprawled across my husband’s resting place where Thackeray discarded her. The rhythm of his renewal is loud and I think: If one can do this, then surely a legion…

“You will lose yourself once more,” Fenella continues. “We must discuss matters for the coming year.”

“Tomorrow’s forgetting will be but a dream,” I say, skittering my nails across the top of my Lord’s tomb, finding not a skerrick of blood left there.

I am so tired of waiting.

How many years between Innsmouth and now? How many times have I taken filaments from young heads and selected a fine needle so I may embroider a new flower into the weave of the tapestry, its border growing with each passing sacrifice? How many years have I sat beside a rock and told my Lord, my liege, my love the same tale, of the patient queen who hides away, protecting her beloved from his enemies? The tale of a wife who loses herself for his very sake, who folds the cloak of Vivienne Croftmarsh around her recollections, her histories, and suppresses everything she is, so hunters may not track him through the power of her memory. A woman who sings him his song, his hymn, his dirge, and waits and waits and waits.

A woman who is weary of waiting.

From beneath, from across, I hear him sigh.

“Bring them,” I say to Burrows and Thackeray, who give me blank stares. My voice is thunder when next I speak, and they cringe with the power of my rage. “Bring them all!”

“But—” begins Thackeray and I grab the front of his shirt and lift him off his feet, revelling in the strength of my arm, myself; and knowing, at last, that I am unwilling to once again give up this self. I shake him for good measure.

“Bring them, by twos and threes. Bring them here and we shall see my Lord awake before too many more cycles have passed. I am tired of waiting.”

A new tomorrow is about to dawn on the Esoteric Order’s Orphans Academy. And then, when my Lord shall finally rise again, I shall take my proper place at His side…